A Traveling’ Through the Pastures of the Sky A Critical Analysis of Breakfast at Tiffany’s By Matthew Cash

A Traveling’ Through the Pastures of the Sky

A Critical Analysis of Breakfast at Tiffany’s

By Matthew Cash

Introduction

Truman Capote's short novel Breakfast at Tiffany's displays a romantic and charming, yet anguishing and heart wrenching drama. Capote paints characters that the reader can recall as if they are remembering a dream of someone they once knew. The beauty and witty naivet of Holly Golightly is balanced only by her extreme sadness. The novel showcases Capote's talent for writing comedy touched with remorse, and a story the is charismatic and filled with emotion. Published in 1958, Breakfast at Tiffany's inspired women to pack their bags and seek their fortunes in New York all over the country. Holly Golightly has taken her place as an American fictional icon, and of all his characters, Capote himself said that she was always his favorite (Clarke 313). Throughout his writing career critics have been both generous and praising to Capote but also disfavoring, harsh, and sometimes utterly stingy. Breakfast at Tiffany's was no exception. Where one critic called it "an unbelievable melodrama" (Goyen 5) another said "although it is not free of Capote's faults, seems to me the best thing he has done yet" (Hyman 148). But these same critics cannot deny the book of it's integrity for in his same review Stanley Hyman says: "Holly is done in wonderful brush strokes..." For the most part, the book was given honorable and praising reviews: "A rare individual voice, cool even when exasperated, never more sure of itself then when amazed, sounds through every sentence," said Paul Darcy Boles of the Saturday Review (20). Whatever the criticism, be it good or bad, Capote shows an undeniable flair for character, humor, and virtue. Some call him unrealistic, fanciful, and indifferent to moral issues (Garson 6-7) but no matter what they say, it is undeniable that Capote remains, and will remain an influential writer long after his death. Breakfast at Tiffany's tells the story of Holly Golightly. It is told by a never named narrator that once knew Holly when he lived above her in an old brownstone apartment building in New York City. In the time that they knew each other, they went from strange neighbors to the closest of confidants. The exposition of the story reveals that it has been fifteen years since the last time the narrator has seen Holly. In those fifteen years he says, "It never occurred to me to write about Holly Golightly, and probably it would not now except for a conversation I had with Joe Bell that set the whole memory of her in motion again" (3). Joe Bell is the proprietor of his own bar on Lexington Avenue, the narrator and Holly used to visit the bar as often as seven times a day, but not always for a drink: "during the war a private telephone was hard to come by," the narrator says (4). The beginning of the story is really the end. It is fifteen years after the events that the narrator describes have taken place. The narrator, now an accomplished writer, returns to Joe Bell's bar and his thoughts are flooded with the bittersweet memories of Holly Golightly. The narrator is summoned by Joe Bell himself, who he has not heard from in several years. He and Joe never had a real relationship, their only link was Holly, who they both more than adored. So the narrator feels some urgency when he arrives at the bar, even hoping perhaps, that Holly might be there. But when he arrives, he sees only an excited Joe Bell, ready with information. Neither of the men have seen or heard from Holly since she left for Brazil, fifteen years ago. The narrator received only a postcard without a return address from her several months after she left New York. Joe Bell shows the narrator a series of photographs that he got from I.Y. Yunioshi, a Japanese photographer that lived in the studio apartment in the old brownstone above the narrator and Holly. The photos were from the jungles of Africa, the image was of a Negro villager holding a wooden sculpture of a woman. To the narrator's surprise it was a likeness of Holly Golightly. Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling Upon leaving Joe Bell's bar, the narrator is suddenly transfixed by his own recollections of Holly. He remembers his first impression of her, given before they even met. On her mailbox was a card that completely typifies her character: Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling. Capote first gave his character the name of Connie Gustafson, obviously inappropriate, he changed it to be more symbolic of her personality, she makes a holiday of life, but treads through it lightly (Clarke 313). For Holly is a traveler, ever seeking a place that she can call home. Holly clearly represents the theme of novel, "...home is where you feel at home. I'm still looking," she says (102). This statement of Holly's resonates through out the book, almost everything she says and does illustrates her outlook on life, and her inability to accept it settled down. "I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead" (19). Holly's background is murky and is something that she doesn't like to discuss, even after she and the narrator become friends. From the little revealed, Holly and her older brother Fred (a name incidentally she calls the narrator due to their physical resemblance) were forced to live with "different mean people" after both of their parents died of tuberculosis. The narrator learns about Holly's past from her abandoned husband, Doc Golightly. Holly and Fred ran away after their parents died and lived on only what they could find or steal. One day they approached the Golightly farm and were caught stealing turkey eggs by one of Doc's children. Holly's name then was Lulamae Barnes and she was only fourteen years old when she and Fred came to Doc's farm in bad physical condition: "Rib sticking out everywhere, legs so puny they can't hardly stand, teeth wobbling so bad they can't chew mush," Doc tells the narrator. Doc, whose first wife had died two years earlier took an extreme liking to the young Lulamae and asked her to marry him. With a true definition of her character Holly said "Course we'll be married. I've never been married before" (69). When the narrator first had the opportunity to view the woman he knew only by the name on her mailbox, he was astounded by the variety in her physical appearance: I went out into the hall and leaned over the banister, just enough to see without being seen. She was still on the stairs, now she reached the landing, and the ragbag colors of her boy's hair, tawny streaks, strands of albino-blond and yellow, caught the hall light. It was a warm evening, nearly summer, and she wore a slim cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker. For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of health, a soap and lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening in the cheeks. Her mouth was large, her nose upturned. A pair of dark glasses blotted out her eyes. It was a face beyond childhood, yet this side of belonging to a woman. I thought her anywhere between sixteen and thirty; as it turned out, she was shy two months of her nineteenth birthday (12-13). One day when Holly and the narrator go for a walk through Fifth Avenue on a beautiful Autumn day Holly seems interested in the narrator's childhood without really telling him about her own, even though talking about herself is something she does quite often. "...it was elusive, nameless, placeless, an impressionistic recital, though the impression received was contrary to what one expected, for she gave an almost voluptuous account of swimming in summer, Christmas trees, pretty cousins and parties: in short, happy in a way she was not, and never, certainly, the background of a child who had run away" (54). Holly's character has such a dramatic flair that the reader nor the narrator never really know what to expect from her. On some occasions she will openly talk about outrageous taboos with perfect strangers and on others she will claw like a cat anyone who gets too close to her: "I asked her how and why she left home so young. She looked at me blankly, and rubbed her nose, as though it tickled: a gesture, seeing often repeated, I came to recognize as a signal that one was trespassing" (20). Holly is not only a physical paradox of a girl and a woman, but so is her personality, she has an odd mixture of child-like innocence and street smart sexuality. This is most apparent in Holly's chosen profession, the one dubbed "the world's oldest". Holly seems to always have a man banging on her door or passed out in her apartment asking more for their money or another "appointment". Holly's first real conversation with the narrator takes place some time after the midnight hour when she escapes from one of her drunken clients via the fire escape and knocks on the narrator's window. Much to his surprise, she is wearing only a robe and asks if she can stay in his apartment until the man in her's passes out or leaves. "...any gent with the slightest chic will give you fifty for the girl's john, and I always ask for cab fare too, that's another fifty," Holly says to the narrator nonchalantly (26). This is do to the fact that Holly doesn't permit herself to believe that she is a prostitute. Her idea of love keeps her from that: "I mean, you can't bang a guy and cash his checks and at least not try to believe you love him" (82). Holly labels all of the men that she has sleep with as "rats" but gives that rattiness a certain allure that makes it acceptable to her. She feels that she has to if she is going to continue to make a living out of it. And not only that, but she hopes to secure her financial future just as easily. While she is in New York, Holly has an array of lovers, but the ones that she works the hardest for are ones that are rich. One of these men in particular, Rusty Trawler, shows Holly's stubborn determination to attract a rich husband and her love of money over love of integrity. The narrator describes Rutherford "Rusty" Trawler as "a middle-aged child that never shed its baby fat" (35). He inherited his father's fortune when he was five years old, making him a millionaire and a celebrity all at once. Holly treats him as a kind of pet, asking him to pour her friends drinks and other favors, which he does unquestionably. When the narrator asks Holly if she really loves him, she replies: "I told you: you can make yourself love anybody" (41). Rusty is really a homosexual, who treats himself to woman because he doesn't want to face that fact. The result is the diaper-wearing personality he portrays that the narrator christens "retarded". Another character introduced about the same time is Mag Wildwood, a woman that in some ways, is similar to Holly. She envies rich men and loves a good party. She is tall and attractive, but has a nervous stutter that Capote uses to help the reader identify her as a perfect example of "frightful womanhood" (Boles 20). Her boyfriend at the time is a handsome Brazilian named Jose Ybarra-Jaegar, a man that the narrator likes much better than the always dependent Rusty Trawler. After the two couples take a trip to Key West, Rusty and Mag end up in the hospital, leaving time for Holly and Jose to get acquainted. The loss of Jose doesn't jostle Mag for very long. She gets what she really wanted, a new husband, Mr. Rutherford Trawler. It is Holly's planned long term relationship with Jose that will bring the events of the novel to its climax. Tiffany & Co. Tiffany's, the jewelry store for which the novel is named, plays an important part in the life of Holly Golightly. It is the only thing that can cure her of the "mean reds", a state of anxiety that is worse than just fear. The narrator first likens Holly's nicknamed depression with the blues, but Holly assures him that they are not the same thing. "No, the blues are because you're getting fat or maybe it's been raining too long. You're sad, that's all. But the mean reds are horrible. You're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don't know what it is" (40). The narrator, always insightful, calls it angst and says that everyone feels that ways sometimes. By whatever name he wants to call it, Holly asks the narrator what he uses as a cure. He says that a drink usually helps him, but Holly spurns the use of drugs (marijuana is Rusty's suggestion) including aspirin to cure her of the mean reds. "What I've found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany's," Holly says. Her sweet innocence and search for a home are revealed in this early scene which shows Holly's naivet about the world. "It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets" (40). Holly's goal in life is to find a real place like Tiffany's, a place where she can belong. Holly mentions that she dreams of settling down, perhaps in Mexico, with her older brother, Fred. But again, when she feels like she is revealing too much about her past she pushes up her dark glasses and changes the subject. Her brother Fred is very important to her, one of the only people she truly cares for. Yet, when she talks about him it is like the rest of her past, whitewashed and unclear. She only mentions that he is a soldier, fighting overseas in the war. On the first night that Holly came to visit the narrator in his apartment she ends up sleeping beside him, showing that Holly needs someone who is comforting instead of lusting toward her. Holly fast falls asleep, but the narrator lies awake, watching her. When the sun begins to rise Holly grips the narrator's arm: "Poor Fred," she said in her sleep. "Where are you, Fred? Because it's cold. There's snow in the wind" (27). When the narrator wakes her because she has tears streaming down her face, she runs out of his apartment, again throwing up a brick wall. "Oh, for God's sake," she says having realized that she let some of her feelings come out. She yells at the narrator before leaving though the fire escape, "I hate snoops." Never Love A Wild Thing Holly's philosophy on life comes forth in a gripping scene when her estranged husband, Doc Golightly, travels all of way from Tulip, Texas to find his runaway wife. Doc is an older man in his fifties, a man that is obviously different compared to Holly's usual jet-set callers, the narrator thinks of him as "provocative". He is not the New York type, far from it, he displays the physical characteristics of a farmer, and his accent easily identifies him as a Southerner. The man watches Holly's apartment, feels the name on her mailbox, but he never knocks on her door. The narrator gets sinister suspicions from the man because of his strange behavior until he hears him whistle a melody that immediately connects him to Holly's mysterious past. It is a tune that she often played on the guitar in her window, sometimes long into the night: Don't wanna sleep, don't wanna die, just wanna go a-travelin' through the pastures of the sky. The ironic touch here is that Doc taught her the song that would so much become a part of her being and lead to her abandoning him and his family. Doc begins to follow the narrator around until they both arrive at Hamburger Heaven, where Doc takes a seat next to the narrator. The narrator finally asks the mysterious man why he has been following him, "Son, I need a friend," Doc tells him. He reveals to the narrator that he was Holly's husband and then the story of how she and Fred had come to live on the Golightly farm. "She plain broke our hearts when she ran off like she done," Doc begins. He recounts how Lulamae (Doc refuses to call her Holly) had everything she should have ever wanted: housework done by the other children, her own garden and animals, all the food she could ever eat, all prepared just for her. "'Twas her home," Doc firmly states, "Don't tell me that woman wasn't happy!" But as the narrator already knows, Holly doesn't have a home, she is always "traveling". Doc claims that all Holly had to do was comb her hair and read magazines. "Ask me, that's what done it. Looking at show-off pictures. Reading dreams. That's what started her walking down the road," Doc says. Little Lulamae Barnes walked a little father everyday, until one day, she never came back. Capote uses some of his best dramatic irony in the novel with the characterization of Doc Golightly. Up until the last minute when he is ready to board a bus bound for Tulip, he truly believes that he has convinced Lulamae to come home with him. But as the reader and the narrator both know, she can't, it would be a total contradiction to everything she believes in. Doc reluctantly is forced to go home with only some new memories of the woman that he loved so much. "Never love a wild, Mr. Bell," Holly says in Joe's bar after she once again leaves Doc. That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you end let yourself love a wild thing. You'll just end up looking at the sky (74). Joe Bell responds with the cynical remark: "She's drunk," but we know that what Holly says is true. Capote makes it evident for us even before Holly utters those words, for in the beginning of the novel the narrator makes Joe Bell realize his feelings for Holly, even years after she has been gone. Joe Bell remained a bachelor throughout his life, never trying to love a wild thing like he loved Holly. Holly's advise unfortunately goes unheeded to almost everyone she meets, Joe Bell, the narrator, Doc, I.Y. Yunioshi, they were all infatuated with her. The narrator's crisp account of events that happened over fifteen years ago are evidence of that. He grew to love Holly, and yet they were never lovers. When the narrator first thinks that Holly had actually married Rusty Trawler (instead in was her friend Mag Wildwood) his feelings for her come to the surface: "...was my outrage a little the result of being in love with Holly myself? A little. For I was in love with her. Just as I'd once been in love with my mother's elderly colored cook and a postman who let me follow him on his rounds and a whole family named McKendrick. That category of love generates jealousy, too" (76). Holly's distaste for the captivity of wild things reverberates through the entire novel, binding it, tying the history of her life into a kind of loop. When Doc had taken Lulamae to be his wife he tamed a wild crow for her. Capote again shows his skill at dramatic and sorrowful irony when after Lulamae runs away, the crow also goes free. "All summer you could hear him," Doc says. "In the garden. In the woods. All summer that damned bird was calling: Lulamae, Lulamae" (70). On the sunny afternoons that the narrator and Holly would spend together, they would walk all around New York (a place Holly says she loves even though it isn't hers), always make sure to avoid the zoo. For Christmas, Holly bought the narrator an expensive but beautiful birdcage that he had once told her he admired when they were window shopping one day. "Promise me, though," Holly says to him, "Promise me you'll never put a living thing in it" (59). Doc wasn't the only person that Holly had left because she herself is a wild thing. And neither are the narrator and Joe Bell. Another character from Holly's past that makes a notable appearance is one Mr. O.J. Berman. He was a Hollywood agent who saw in Holly the makings of a movie star. He had her take French lessons in hopes that it would help her speak English, because as he tells the narrator, "...even when she opens her mouth and you don't know if she's a hillbilly or an Okie or what" (32). But on the day of her big screen test, O.J. gets a phone call from Holly, she was in New York when she was supposed to be in California. Holly's explanation? "I've never been to New York" (32). Holly says that she could never accept the life of a movie star because it would be essential that she give up her ego. "I don't mean I'd mind being rich and famous. That's very much on my schedule, and someday I'll try to get around to it; but if it happens, I'd like to have my ego tagging along. I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany's" (39). This early scene from the novel shows how Capote beautifully ties together the title with his heroine's philosophy of life and thus the theme of the story. Bon Voyage Oompahpah The end of Holly's story is developed in a remembrance of her last day in New York. She had been planning for months to go with Jose to Brazil, in hopes of becoming his wife. The two had been living together for quite some time when Jose finally plans to go back to Brazil in hopes of a future political career. Holly is changed by Jose in the time they spend together. She calls him her first "non-rat romance" (82) and is six weeks pregnant by the time chance intervenes and destroys Holly's hopes for an ideal Tiffany-like life with Jose. It involved her relationship with Sally Tomato, a Mafia fuhrer who is locked away in Sing Sing for tax evasion. His "lawyer", Mr. O'Shaughnessy, had been paying Holly a hundred dollars an hour if she would visit Sally at the prison once a week just to chat and give the "weather report" to Mr. O'Shaughnessy from Sally. In reality, it was a clever scheme that allowed Sally to operate his narcotics operations from behind bars, using Holly as his courier. Even though Holly had no idea of what she was actually doing, she was arrested nonetheless and in a scuffle with the police, she lost her baby. Unfortunately, that is not all that Holly lost that day. While she is recovering in the hospital, the narrator goes to Holly's apartment and discovers Jose's cousin packing his things. The man leaves with Jose's possessions giving the narrator only a letter, from Jose to Holly. Holly is public displayed on the front page of every newspaper: "PLAYGIRL ARRESTED IN NARCOTICS SCANDAL" was just one of the headlines. This was too much for Jose, whose entire life was strictly more dedicated to his public career than to a wife and a family. He fled for Brazil saying in his letter to Holly: "But conceive of my despair upon discovering in such a brutal and public style how very different you are from the manner of woman a man of my faith and career could hope to make his wife" (99). Holly puts up a barrier, fortifying her emotions after she reads the letter, and then to the narrator's surprise, says that she is going to Brazil regardless. "It's the only way," she says, "why should I waste a perfectly fine plane ticket? Already paid for? Besides, I've never been to Brazil" (101). O.J. Berman provides the bond money for Holly's bail and she is quick to ask the narrator to bring her things, along with a list of the fifty richest men in Brazil, to Joe Bell's bar so she can leave immediately for the airport. "...once I walked from New Orleans to Nancy's Landing, Mississippi, just under five hundred miles," the narrator says on Holly's last day in New York, "It was a light-hearted lark compared to the journey to Joe Bell's bar" (105). Joe Bell refused to drink to Holly's departure and as she got up to leave he threw one of his flower arrangements to her, but they instead scattered on the floor. "Good-bye" was all he said and then locked himself in the bathroom. The narrator accompanied Holly on her ride to the airport, where Capote's novel reaches its climax. Halfway there, Holly tells the driver to stop along a street in Spanish Harlem. She gets out of the car, cradling her unnamed cat in her arms. "It's a little inconvenient, his not having a name," Holly told the narrator when they first met, "But I haven't any right to give him one: he'll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I" (39). She drops the cat onto the street saying "This ought to be the right kind of place for a tough guy like you. Garbage cans. Rats galore. Plenty of cat-bums to gang around with. So scram. I said beat it!" (108). She then jumped back in the car and told the driver to go. The narrator is shocked at Holly's treatment of her cat, an obvious reaction to Jose's treatment of her. But at the next stop, Holly flings open the door and runs back for the cat, except he is nowhere to be found. "Oh, Jesus God," she says, "We did belong to each other" (109). The narrator makes Holly a promise that he will come back and find her cat and take care of him. Holly accepts and then gets back into the car on her way to the airport. We get a sense that Holly has come to some kind of greater realization of what she wants when she says, "I'm very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go on forever. Not knowing what's yours until you've thrown it away" (109). If Holly ever did find a home, the narrator never learns. But when he finds her cat one day, in a cozy apartment window, he is sure that it has a name and if it can find a home perhaps Holly can as well. Capote's writing gives the reader a romantic fever of remembrance, of things that are gone and a future that is unknown. The story of Holly Golightly is in a way a part of Capote's life and perhaps a part of us all. The part that is constantly wandering, roaming, searching for a place to belong. Holly is the epitome of wild things, for what place does a wild thing belong but in the wild? It puts forth the question but not the answer of where a wild thing belongs when there is no wilderness left. But the cat, a wanderer who found a home, gives us some hope, that a wild thing can find a place to belong, and not be caged. It is a motif that Capote exposes with a charming tale and a truly unforgettable character. Works Cited Boles, Paul Darcy. "Legend of Holiday and the Lost." Saturday Review Nov. 1958: 20. Capote, Truman. Breakfast At Tiffany's. New York: Vintage Books-A Division of Random House, 1986 ed. Clarke, Gerald. Capote: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. Garson, Helen S. Truman Capote. New York: Fredrick Ungar Publishing, 1980. Goyan, William. "That Old Valentine Maker." New York Times Book Review Nov. 1958: 5,38. Hyman, Stanley Edgar. "Fruitcake at Tiffany's." Standards: A Chronicle of Books of Our Time. New York: Horizon Press, 1966: 148-52.

HYMAN, Stanley Edgar "Fruitcake at Tiffany's," in his Standards A Chronicle of Books

for Our Time, Horizon Press, 1966. 

In:   http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bcash/criticalanalysis.html